Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Almost there...

After more than four months of looking at code like this:

_____________ {* $Id: select_currency.tpl 3746 2007-08-27 08:24:25Z zeke $ *} {if $currencies && !$hide_currencies} {if $settings.Addons.seo == 'Y'} {assign var="qstring" value=$seo_url.page|fn_query_remove:'currency'|replace:'&':'&'} {assign var="qaction" value="&sl='+this.value"} {if !$qstring|strpos:'?'}{assign var="qstring" value="$qstring?"}{/if} {else} {assign var="qprefix" value="$index_script?"} {assign var="qstring" value=$QUERY_STRING|fn_query_remove:'currency'|replace:'&':'&'} {/if} {/if}

______________ and sending off pleading questions daily to the rather, er, well rather Russian support team at CS-Cart (what do I mean by rather Russian? Well, for starters they sometimes forget themselves and tell you you're an idiot. And you can see that they find it a real strain to use "please" and "thank-you" sufficiently for a Western-culture customer. Which reminds me of the redoubtable Vassilisa who once quietly asked Alex to have a word with me and ask me not to say "Please" every time I asked her to do something. "It's making me nervous, Alex," she explained.)...

...I am nearly there with the shop. I think. Unless I discover something else that needs changing. Now all we have to do is check every one of the 200 or so products (some with ten options and half a dozen pictures - OMG, what are we doing?) and do about a million test orders in various currencies. Then find out how to set up the "membership" for "Friends of Baba Studio" (okay, okay, but it's NICE) so that it only kicks in under certain criteria. Then make sure that the same happens for wholesale. Then try to prevent the inventory from insisting on believing that everything is sold out (not helpful, really not helpful).

I will say this - this is the most GORGEOUSLY well put together piece of code. I am not much of a coder - wild understatement - but I do love neat, clean, modular code when I see it.

However, the user-interface design leaves a little more to be desired, so mostly that's what I've been working on. How DO you explain to a Russian support team that not everyone will know that "None" in the currency box means that-you-have-not-chosen-an-alternative-option-so-will-get-the-default-currency-which-happens-in-this-case-to-be-Euro. As I said, er, Please (whoops) can we just say "Euro" instead of "None"? Call me whacky.

At moments like this I remember that my main profession over the years (with some other pretty odd ones thrown in along the way) was being a user-interface designer. Deep down, I am really enjoying setting up this shop. My precious.

No comments:

Post a Comment